Rename a networked printer...

Hi,

We have recently joined our parent companies 2008 Active Directory.
We currently have a Windows Server 2000 print server sharing printers to about 50 PC users running XP.

We would like to change the naming convension of our printers i.e. from IT HP LaserJet 2430 > DC1 IT HP LaserJet 2430.
I can do this fine and it lists in Active Directory with the new name. However it breaks the current printer that is setup on a machine already.

Is there a way to rename the printer without the need to visit each machine to set the printer up again?

This is a nasty problem. All user profiles on all pc's have printer connections to \\server\oldname and these need to be changed into \\server\newname. As far as I know of, there is no other way to do this (apart from manually) than to run a loginscript that looks at the current printerconnections for this user and replaces them if they do not conform to the new naming pattern.

A similar problem is when all printqueues are moved to another server (with unchanged names). I used to following script to tackle this :

If your users are using Vista or Windows 7 OS on the workstations, you could use the Print Management Console on one of your Windows 2008 servers to deploy the printers through group policy. It's pretty simple and works very smoothly with Win7/Vista - not so smoothly with Windows XP although it is possible with some tweaking. Take a look at this article with links to info on how to do this:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754699.aspx

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Vai777Author Commented: 2010-08-26

The users computers are all running XP. The print server itself is running Windows Server 2000.

It might just be easier to do it by department and visit each machine. Its not that many tbh.

Yeah - with XP and Windows 2000, you don't have a lot of choices - two in fact: scripting as described by rlaning, or visiting each machine. IME, creating and troubleshooting a script for a relatively small number of machines is usually more trouble than it's worth. One thing you could do to make your like a bit easier would be to do the change manually on one machine, then export the applicable registry entries and use that .reg file to import on all the other machines. That way you don't have to do the whole process manually on each machine.

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Vai777Author Commented: 2010-09-02

Decided that it would be easier to rename the printers and set them up manually again.

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